Winner | Re-Frame Toledo

Name: Garrett Rock

Project Name: Re-Frame Toledo

Project Statement: Re-Frame Toledo is a proposal to reimagine how a deindustrialized cityscape can become a highly active and engaging series of public spaces, mixed-use neighborhoods, and Nature Reserves that help benefit the local ecology.Harnessing the large scale of local dredging, Re-Frame Toledo proposes to incorporate phytoremediation with the dredge cycle as an active means of cleaning sediment. Countering industrial pollution and phosphorus contamination from fertilizers, a series of cleaning sites including the Great Lakes Center for Dredge Research are established. The Center additionally functions as a public forum and gathering space, a multimedia exhibition center, and a research facility.Once dominated by infrastructural and industrial landscapes, the vacated riverfront has the potential to embody the public face of a renewed Toledo. Dredge material is incorporated into a series of new articulated topographies that engage the public with the water. A continuous riverwalk on the north shore links downtown with the Center for Dredge Research in a sequence of public attractions and connections to existing neighborhoods. The south shore is dominated by the new Marina District, a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood that benefits from its central location and interrelationship with the riverfront.Former CDF sites are transformed into Nature Reserves that recreate native landscape typologies—Lowland Deciduous Forests and Freshwater Wetlands—of the Great Lakes Region. To further improve the local water ecology and supplement lost habitat, a riparian zone is constructed along the riverfront to mitigate stormwater runoff and filter the Maumee River as it flows into Lake Erie.

Re-Frame Toledo ultimately provides a comprehensive framework for the city where the riverfront can be reassembled with dredge material to delineate relevant urban and landscape processes in context with the Maumee River.